That was what I was going to call my blog when I had the first idea of blogging about WoW. Almost a year ago, now, when one guild was slowly falling apart as it was due to a lot of the core being somehow disillusioned with all the Cataclysm news, and leaning towards Aion.

“Hey, speaking of WoW-killers, what’s a one-word joke?” “Aion.”

I had no intention of going, especially because the beta left me thoroughly unimpressed and there was no endgame that I would appreciate. And so, knowing he and the other officers would leave the guild when we downed Arthas (at the very latest, when Cata came out), he said he would leave me to run the guild. Around the same time, the guild was splitting into two faction camps – ‘his people’, and ‘my people’, because our visions that we both founded the guild on, and the people they and we had attracted, weren’t working out together. And when eight of our members started spending no time in WoW except to raid and spent the rest playing the Aion beta or early release, those who remained began to feel disillusioned, that most of leadership was out of touch and just using those who remained to aggrandize their own raiding, it was suggested – and I began to consider – that really, he should step down now.

And when he did, there would have been changes. But that time never came, we just argued to the point that I couldn’t take what our guild had become, and then on the heels of a ridiculous argument, I finally gquit. I lurked for a bit getting my affairs in order, and then took Mathorvos to Alliance side and Azgalor.

I knew, though, that to run the show is to deal with drama. The blog was originally not going to be yet another Hunter blog, but rather a blog about picking up the gm hat to go with my officer’s stars and what that journey was like, and the drama that followed.

Why do I mention this, now?

Because I have left Brotherhood of Oblivion. The story is too much to tell here, because the story isn’t what happened in terms of who said or did what. The truth of the story is in how those involved perceived events that happened, and how those perceptions and mis/understandings colored their future perceptions and influenced those actions. And right now, there are two major stories who only agree on the most basic of facts and actors, mutually incompatible narratives about why it happened.

Ultimately, I left some friends behind. I left behind some people who’s company I enjoy. But I knew I did the right thing when, being sad that no one replied in farewell to my parting forum post, I was invited to Stands in Bad – and almost everyone whose reply would have meant a damn said in /g that it was nice to see me there.

I have been digging into the story and seen a relatively catastrophic clash of miscommunication and misunderstanding. I have learned a lot, both in the positive “this seems to have worked, albeit to little because it is far too late” and in the negative “this does not work.” My attitudes have grown and I have learned from these events.

I thought to use them, as I told the then-GM of BoO, and now-GM of Stands in Bad, to start my own guild. And that was when I learned that so much of what I wanted to do with a new guild was a part of Amber’s plan. Believing myself more to be an (excellent) officer than a commander, and not wanting to butt guilds on two very similar visions, I resigned my commission in BoO for a number of reasons I don’t desire to get into in public, and accepted a commission in Stands in Bad.

It is still Lieutenant Huntard. Just in a new guild. I am Mathorvos, and I Stand in Bad.

I – pledge – my – allegiance
Toooo all things dark
And I promise on my damned soul
To – do – as I am told
Lord Beelzebub has never seen
A soldier quite like me
Not – only – does his job

But does it hap-pi-ly…

*smiles slowly*

As of tonight, I am an illustrious officer in the glorious Brotherhood of Oblivion. If you’ll permit me a moment?

MU WA HA HA HAHAHAHA.

Ahem.

… POWER! AHAHAHUHAHA

… AHEM, self. I said “AHEM”.

Oh. Well then. I’ll be nice. And quiet. I guess.

I promise to be fair and to keep the interests of the guild and it’s functioning close to heart. I truly believe in good officering, and I shall to my best to carry out the duties of my office. I just have some fun with the affected appearances of power-mad glee.

Also, it’s been a couple months, but I’m back. I’ll get something about Hunter Changes, well behind the curve, up in the near future. And maybe talk about what it means, to me, to have – and to be – an officer.

But I figured the shiny new silver bar was a good reason to dust this place off and come back. Hello again. :)

Galgamesh hit 80 earlier last night, in the only fitting way – in the middle of tanking an instance. Ahn’kahet. In fact, the first boss she fought at 80 was Prince. But not in the Blood Princes version, thankfully.

After a bit of scurrying around, getting a Titansteel Shield Wall, getting stuff enchanted with Defense, getting capped, she’s run a few heroics – and thanks to Mach, Hhol, and Azureangel taking turns healing, several regular Trial of the Champions.

She has The Black Heart, on her first night of being 80, before she even has a single piece of T9. This seems wrong, and either presages greatness, or a titanic disaster of gearing.

Mu wa ha ha ding!

But now maybe we can go back to Huntering and some more thoughtful posts.

I am sure there’s a much longer and more interesting post here, but it escapes me. I’m sure I can edit, or just write a new one. ^^

disclaimer! my memory is like a goldfish made of swiss cheese and any info regarding officer stuff is secondhand and inference, so Amber/Mach/Atropus/Evisc (cognrats) / etc?, if I get something wroooong, just smack me.

So, first up, BoO needs peoples! I’m sure that most people right now reading this are either a) guildies, b) former guildies, or c) other friends, so not exactly a diverse and virile pool of recruitables, but if you want to join us for funs and lulz, come stop by the forum… just, please, don’t be a DK or a Hunter because we have so many. Besides then if you’re a hunter you need to compete with me for loot, and that makes Spiffykitty the Ghostsaber and Agincourt the Frostwolf sad. Please, think of the pets!

Anyway – I was talking to Atropus (who happens to be an officer, god help us all), about how the guild is trying to recruit, and what we need, and thinking of optimality, he lists what we could best use for tanks, healers, and even dps (yes, folks, we need dps – unthinkable!). My first question is how much recruitment is ironclad on only recruiting certain classes and specs for diversity, and how much it’s trying to recruit to fill one of the four/five/six main roles in a raid (tank – the MT/OT distinction seems a bit to have evaporated in Wrath, tank heals, raid heals, melee dps, ranged dps, magical dps – the distinctions being important in Wrath, though while it seems it’s either melee vs. ranged or physical vs. magical*, but I’m not sure if that’s really two distinctions or three – lol, Hunters).

(*which puts some classes, such as Survival Hunters in a bind, because *Cam Clarke voice* half of my dps is magical *beat* … and the other half is fabulous. */Cam Clarke voice*. :( Fuck you, dolphiiiiin Lady Deathwhispeeeeeer!)

… Holy crap, I digress. Anyway, it was about this time when I realized, when it comes to getting a lot done in life / WoW / what do you mean they’re not the same?, my guiding principle is Pragmatism. I’ve seen guilds choke on putting principle above pragmatism and getting nothing done to my mounting frustration, and I’ve seen guilds that claim pragmatism as a shroud bloat and topple because they’ve got no principles to hold it up.

I’ve been in, hrm – Green Mountain Militia, Omen of Faith, Hotuken Knights, Magnate, Infinium, Curse of Eminence, Pride of Victory, Brotherhood of Oblivion – holy crap, eight guilds over ~three or four years. And of the many things I’ve learned (besides, holy crap, I could write a book of studies on the psychology of Warcraft) is that, ultimately, for things to get done, things need to get done. Which is kind of a loltautology, but I don’t think a lot of people frame it like that (which I mean in general, BoO’s recruitment is a leaping point for this, not the point/target of this). And how do you get things done? Practicality!

You really need a tank to do something. You have two options in front of you – a Death Knight, and no tank. Now, if you go with the no tank, then nothing happens. Now, maybe you have an irrational mistrust of Death Knight tanks, or think “they can’t MT” despite all the contradictory evidence in front of you and your own misconceptions about the class, like “they don’t have a taunt except Death Grip” – so you might not want to go with the Death Knight. But he has a frost spec, and when asked what presence he tanks in, he says “Frost, duh” (seriously, ask – you’ll save a lot of time if you’re pugging a DK tank by asking that one question), so if you at least give him a try, then there’s a chance that, wham, you have made progress!

Similarly, going back to the example provided by BoO and then fictionalizing, if you have raid slots, going with your optimal choices for buff / ability / gear diversity is, well, optimal. However, ultimately, if you’re too specific you’re either not recruiting anyone or taking forever, and with the modern distribution of buffs the need for a specific class is pretty much largely gone (unlike the worst days of raid tuning that I know of, Ye Olde Sunwell Plateau), you can “bring the player, not the class” to fill most raid spots – be practical, and then your recruitment pool is a lot better … and then, wham, you’ve filled out the guild.

I’m sure there’s a lot more examples I’ll think of later, because sometimes, with some people, it seems like a foreign concept, and if it’s too foreign, the whole languishes in doing nothing, or just doing Ulduar 10 / undermanning 25 again.

My laptop – which I play WoW on – exploded. Well, it didn’t so much explode as ‘not boot up’. My desktop, which is older but still runs WoW, is down in San Marcos, and I won’t have access to it until Monday evening. And even then, I’m going to need to basically do a full reinstall of WoW (and Vent), and addons. Lovely.

So, yeah. This laptop I’m borrowing has a weird keyboard (the natural positions my fingers go to aren’t in the right areas now) – but I shall persevere. Just not play WoW for a while. *cry* And my 80s were so close to enough badges to get their first pieces of frost gear!

… Yet, [Lord Marrowgar Must Die!]? Really, Blizzard? Really?

However, the blogging will continue! Just, my friendly BoOites reading this, this is why you won’t see me for a while. Sigh, it’s too early in my membership to miss raids… :(

Yes, I know you’re confused. You went to bed one day a bishie blood elf hunter, curled up in one of the Hammocks of the Dirty Beast because 99% of the time you still log out at an inn even though you’re 80, and woke up the next with a sore head, blue boobies, and in the middle of the Exodar, wondering what the hell just happened.

I know you miss having Cam Clarke’s voice, but we all do. We all do. I know you’re not yet used to being Alliance. Or being a chick. It’s still weird to see you! But despite the hooves, the tail, the horns, and, yes, the blue boobies, you’re still the same ol’ hunter. When you whistle, Spiffykitty comes running, and is still the same awesome cat you’ve had for 61 levels. When you point at stuff, things die. You just now sound russian. And female. And look at it like this – while we all agree that Garrosh Hellscream is just awful, you can NOW kill him. You will, when Cata comes out. Lok’tar Ogar! Uhm, I mean, For The Alliance! Yes. Indeed.

But this also means when you get to Dalaran, when you want to log at an inn, or look at badge gear, or get the cooking daily, or get a portal, don’t walk into Sunreaver’s Sanctuary! They don’t recognize you anymore! Even after twenty times, they’re not going to just go “oh hai there” and let you in to reward your endless persistence or accede to a year’s worth of developed habit. You’re just going to have to learn to go to the place with the beer garden. Yes, there is a beer garden now. The tavern isn’t as welcoming, and there’s no big feast laid out, but it’s got Dwarves serving teh beer!

No, I know you got smashed before you woke up a Draenei, but I promise it won’t happen again! Your new home is better and not gonna turn out all untenable on you. Promise!

Likewise, I know you’ve got rapport with all the tellers at the North Bank, it’s where you’ve dumped thousands of gold and mats into the guild bank and filled your bank with glowing things, but when people are looking to do business, on “the steps of the bank”, it’s South Bank. Yeah, it’s not as cool, but hey, gold is always cool, and service might mean bigger tips than having them come to you. South Bank now! Just be glad it’s not West Bank.

Sure, It’s a kind of despondent feeling not knowing your way around anymore, waking up in The Exodar and not even knowing how to get back to Northrend without a port, your potions of water walking or panoply of winged mounts from drakes to gryphons to hyppogriffs unable to just travel there by foot and flight, and you had to stop and ask a nice gnome warlock for directions, but now you know where you’re going, and you even only tried to land on Ogrim’s Hammer once.

… Boy, we learned that lesson fast.

Just, a final note: when you’re riding around on your nice new Elekk and being maybe even taller than a troll (since they never mastered the /posture emote), remember to DUCK. Those doors you could just run through before, on your raptor? Now they won’t let you through. Your helm is starting to get dented, hon.

Still, the new guild sure is fun, isn’t it! I know it’s confusing, but you’ll adjust in time, just like you adjusted to all the old things. Meanwhile, keep having fun!

Signed,
your player.

p.s.: it sure was cool riding into Stormwind on the back of Frostsaber while Mars, Bringer of War hums along in the background, was it? Sure couldn’t do that as a Blood Elf!

—–
—–

“Self?”
“Yes, self?”“You’re talking to your character.”
“Yes I am.”“Which is pretty much the same as talking to yourself, isn’t it?”
“Hrm. Yeah, I guess it is.”“You’re not BRK, self.”
“… No, I’m not.”“Self, are you going crazy?”
“… Am I going crazy? Why no, no I am not.”

And I’m sure this is EXACTLY what our win-ful GM Amber had in mind when she set the message… To set the scene, I mention FH in guild, and we start talking about how so many of us in BoO HAVE blogs. To be funny, one of the officers on reposts the GMotD in guildchat. We’re still kinda talking about that, and how “Math, you can’t, one more blogger in BoO might cause Warcraft to explode”, when … well … THIS happens:

Good god I was laughing so hard it hurt.

<3

(Sorry, Evis, you KNEW it was gonna be posted somewhere, and Amber hasn't yet!)

Been a while since I’ve posted, but I’ve been having to do LIFE things and then just having too much damn fun playing WoW, to post about WoW. Hrm. Maybe Teh Blogforce is weak in this one.

—

So, yeah. Alliance now. In switched him tuesday, after staying up late to do the Weekly – tuesday morning, woke up, found out that Faction Change resets your ID but doesn’t reset your having done the weekly. Shrug, and take advantage of SARTHWEEKLY to try and organize a zerg. And you know what?

VICTORY. Also, dear mr. paranoid guy: god forbid someone who can zerg Sarth 13 (which is a lot of people now) isn’t in guild. Out of habit, I was leading since I set it up, and set it to master looter. And so someone there starts insisting with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that I’m a ninja. I protest no, he says YES, he gets in a huff and leaves. I grumble, and set it back to NBG since, hey, that’s how it should go. And you know what happens anyway? Everyone rolls need on the Black Drake.

And I win it anyway.
The black drake was certainly a good score, but I tell you, vindication is the sweetest of all loots.

—-

Then I switched servers, and found a new raid weekly, but no one wants to do it (’cause it’s Maly, and Maly sucks and apparently everyone becomes a Newb in it – even yours truly), and found that server change resets your raid IDs, but you STILL keep the raid weekly as being done, even if it’s different.

But oh well! Within a week I’ve come further than I’ve gone in a few months with PoV. Anub’arak 25? Dead. Raid was maybe a quarter pug, but you know what? I feels better to raid and progress and have pugs than it does to not do anything, or to do the same old Ulduar or Trial 10 instead of … oh, what’s this? Saurfang down? Saurfang down. Something else I learned: ICC is fun!

…Challenging, too, which just makes it all the better. Frustrating, sometimes. But, ultimately, rewarding.

The new guild is saner and – so far – relatively drama free (though that may just be me not being here long, or not being privy to officer chat this time around). And, goddamn, somehow, sorry my old folks, far more fun. And chain heroics on my Shaman is pretty fun. Melee is WTF omg WHIRLWIND and needing to STAYONTARGET and owning my poor little spacegoat’s face and wearing holes in her new boots, and I think she might be cursed to wear the same green trinkets forever (or at least another 22 Frost Emblems). But it’s new, and fun. From this, maybe it’s time to jump headfirst into tanking or healing (Shammy’s got a decent healing gear for non-wHoRe Heroics, just needs to get it enchanted).

Really, I haven’t been this happy with the game in ages.

Now I just need to get more than one person to switch servers to here :D

—-

And because it’s obligatory:

ZOMG my hunter now has blue tits! Wtf.

Mathorvos (oh, RNG, you cad) wasn’t much of a Blood Elf Man’s name, but it was servicable. As a female Spacegoat, however, it’s a bit less fitting – though I’m attached to it enough to be keeping it.

Oh, yeah, and due to downing Lady Raving Madwoman, I have a BOW again. BOOOOOOWWWWW. No more click BANG click BANG click BANG annoying sound, just the sweet thwiptwang thwiptwang thwiptwang thwiptwang of needling people into loot-filled pincushions with a BOOOOOOOW. I’ve not used a raid bow since Naxx 25, almost a damn year ago (Envoy of Mortality ftw, Widebarrel Flintlock ftw, yes, I got no upgrade from Ulduar, but only 3 of them, ever out of my reach, were upgrades over the best-named weapon in the game).